Even Money - By Dick Francis & Felix Francis Page 0,44

the dire consequences of my failure to attend the court proceedings.

I was asked by the court usher to state my full name and address, and then to hold a Bible in my right hand. I read the Coroner’s Court oath from a card. “I swear by Almighty God, that the evidence I shall give shall be the truth and nothing but the truth.”

“You are the deceased’s son?” asked the coroner. He was a small, balding man, the meager amount of hair that he did retain being combed right over the top of his head. Throughout the proceedings, he had been writing copious notes in a spiral-bound notebook, and he now looked expectantly at me over a pair of half-moon glasses.

“Yes,” I said. I was standing in the witness-box of the court.

“What was your father’s full name?” he asked.

“Peter James Talbot,” I said.

“And his date of birth?”

I gave it. I knew every detail of my father’s birth certificate as well as I knew my own. The coroner wrote it down in his notebook.

“And his last permanent address?” he asked, not looking up.

I pulled the photocopy of the driver’s license from my pocket and consulted it. “He lived at 312 Macpherson Street, Carlton North, a suburb of Melbourne, Australia,” I said.

“And when did you last see your father alive?” he asked.

“As he was lifted into the ambulance at Ascot racetrack,” I said.

He wrote furiously in his notebook.

“So you were present at the time of the assault?” he asked.

“Yes,” I said.

He wrote it down.

“Was that when your eye was injured?” he asked.

“Yes,” I said again.

The coroner seemed to glance over at Detective Chief Inspector Llewellyn, who was sitting on a bench to his right.

“Are the police aware of your presence at the time of the assault?” the coroner asked me.

“Yes,” I said.

He nodded, as if he had done his bit for the investigation, and wrote something down in his notebook.

“Did you observe the body of the deceased after death at Wexham Park Hospital?” he asked.

“Yes,” I said once more.

“Can you swear to the court—and I remind you, Mr. Talbot, that you are under oath—that the body you observed at that time was that of your father?”

“I believe it was my father, yes,” I said.

The coroner stopped writing his notes and looked up at me.

“That doesn’t sound very convincing, Mr. Talbot,” he said.

“Until the day of his death,” I said, “I hadn’t seen my father, or even known of his existence, for the past thirty-six years.”

The coroner put down his pen.

“And how old are you, Mr. Talbot?” he asked.

“Thirty-seven,” I said.

“Then how can you believe that the deceased was your father if you haven’t seen him since you were one year old?”

“He told me so,” I said.

The coroner appeared amazed.

“And you took his word for it?” he asked.

“Yes, sir,” I replied, “I did. We had been speaking about family matters for some time before the attack on us in the Ascot parking lot, and I became convinced that, indeed, he was my father as he had claimed. In addition, I was informed by the police last Thursday that DNA analysis had confirmed the fact.”

“Ah,” he said. He turned towards Chief Inspector Llewellyn. “Is this so, Chief Inspector?”

“Yes, sir,” he said, standing up. “The DNA indicated that Mr. Talbot here and the deceased were very closely related. Almost certainly father and son.”

I briefly wondered why the police had not informed the coroner’s office of the DNA results beforehand. It might have saved me from even attending.

The coroner wrote furiously for about a minute in his notebook before looking up at me. “Thank you, Mr. Talbot, that will be all.”

Nothing about Alan Charles Grady, and, less surprisingly, nothing about Willem Van Buren. Identification of the deceased had been formally established as Peter James Talbot.

“May I arrange a funeral?” I asked the coroner.

He again turned towards the chief inspector. “Do the police have any objection to an order being issued?”

Chief Inspector Llewellyn stood up. “At this time, sir,” he said, “we would prefer it if the body would remain available for further post-mortem inspection.”

“And why is that?” the coroner asked him.

“We have reason to believe, sir, that the deceased may have been connected with other past crimes, and we may wish to perform further DNA testing.”

“Do the necessary samples not already exist?” the coroner asked him.

“We may have the need to gather more,” said the detective chief inspector.

“Very well,” said the coroner. He turned back to me. “Sorry, Mr. Talbot, I will not issue a burial order